


Potential imprints of human like things

by Basilintime



Series: Impression upon Space [1]
Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: Angst, Crack, Ghost Drifting, Ghost Hunting, Ghosts, M/M, really it's turn into a lot of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1466257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basilintime/pseuds/Basilintime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newton is finding himself dealing with how boring life is after the apocalypse has been cancelled, so he tried to fill the hole with something new; Ghost hunting. He drags Hermann along and amongst their bickering they find themselves dealing with more than they had expected at an old abandoned hotel and they might just find out a little more about each other because of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I cannot believe you brought me here under these false pretenses!” Soooo...Hermann was pissed, but whatever man, that was his normal state of being. It would actually be more concerning at this point if the man wasn’t upset that Newton had dragged him to this run down hotel that had, in fact, been a functioning facility up until a year ago to do something as dubious as ‘hunting ghosts’. Newton needed _something_ though, anything that would bring the rush of adrenaline and dopamine back to his chemically deprived brain. Canceling the apocalypse had been amazing and awesome and a little bit traumatizing, but returning to the normal humdrum life where the world wasn’t dependent on your copious amounts of intellect to transcribe the DNA coding to be used for mass destruction of an alien race had left Newton feeling a bit...itchy. 

This so far was a lame substitute but he was hopeful, I mean, there had to be something to this ghost shit despite what every legitimate scientific study had said so far. Really, most of those hadn’t even _disproven_ the existence of ghost but had instead just come up inconclusive as to whether they existed or not so...totally open for experimentation. So, Newton had gotten online and searched for the nearest ‘most haunted’ spots and had figured out an ideal situation for exploring the potential for the remnants of living beings leaving behind an imprint upon an environment that could be communicated with in a manner consistent with human intellect. This had worked out nicely, in fact there were even a couple of rooms still with beds and such that could be utilized if this was a bust and they actually ended up just sleeping through the night. Except for Hermann...that’s right, Hermann was pissed. 

“Come on man, it’s a new experience. Besides, the Breach is shut so if you’re not creating predictive models for the location and timing of the Breach then what are you going to do? It seems like creating a basis for a predictive model for exploring the potential of-”

“Dr. Geiszler, need I remind you that ghosts, as a whole, do not exist?”

“Um, man, I’m pretty sure if you asked anyone like a decade ago about the existence of an alien race who uses trans-dimensional genetically coded Breaches in time and space to infiltrate out planet you’d have gotten that same response. Clearly, things that seem out there are meant to be proven.” 

“I cannot believe you, of all people, actually believe in the existence of human souls after death.” 

“Hey, I didn’t say I believed in anything, however, being open to the possibility that there’s something that could be influencing the environment with an intelligent though invisible presence is another thing entirely.” Hermann gave a derisive snort at this, relaxing his stance from so perfectly straight backed there must be a rod shoved up my ass to his resigned and loose acceptance of Newton’s idiocy stance where he slouched just a little and leaned heavily on his cane. This was a good sign. 

“Please, just don’t quote Einstein’s theory on the conservation of energy as proof of such a thing.” Newton gave a incredulous laugh, shaking his head as he set his bag down on the countertop that once would have been the reception desk. Dude, there were still old keys hanging along the wall, how retrocool was that? They should have visited this place when it was still open. 

“God no, who do you think I am Hermann? An amateur? Anyone with a basic working knowledge of physics has dismissed that as a viable explanation for paranormal phenomena.” Newton shook his head, laughing at the thought of it. Really, who did Hermann think he was dealing with here? Did he forget all the rockstar-level science they’d been doing together over the last decade of their lives? 

“This place is...structurally sound, correct?” Hermann had been studying the architecture of the foyer of the hotel finding it delicate and intricate. Perhaps if nothing else he could find a quiet corner away from Newton and his questionable theories that were better left to true physicist and not an overachieving biologist with six doctorates under his ridiculous looking belt. Damn it all, he was going to have to participate for fear of the man jumping to some farfetched theory. Or worse, Newton actually coming up with a completely plausible theory and rubbing it in Hermann’s face after the fact because, despite everything, Newton did have a rather beautiful brain. 

“Yeah dude, don’t worry. They only closed down cause of the economic pressures of being a hotel in a high Kaiju traffic area. It’s a shame though this place looks like it was amazing.” Newton had been rummaging in his bag for some time now, and had pulled out a number for tools that Hermann glanced over. There were a couple of cameras for documenting purposes as well as the voice recorder that Hermann recognized as being _the_ voice recorder. _Or I’m dead, and I’d like you to know that it’s all your fault._ Hermann pushed the memory aside as he tried to focus on what else was laid out on the countertop. There was a rudimentary EMF detector amongst the pile as well as a few items that appeared to be speakers and some kind of phonetic device. Hermann’s nose wrinkled slightly at the sight of it all before he looked at Newton’s face. 

“What...are you wearing?” 

“Isn’t it awesome! I picked it up from this little shop near Reckoner, well, the remains of Reckoner...wouldn’t that be both terrifying and cool if the ghost of that guy started haunting all the Kaiju cultists? I mean, that’d be a ghost to write home about-”

“Dr. Geiszler, please-”

“Dude, do I need to remind you that we’ve worked together for a considerably large chunk of our lives, we’ve been inside each other’s brains and we’re currently alone? Will you please stop calling me that, _Hermann_?” Hermann pinched the bridge of his nose, knocking his glasses loose so that they swung down on the string that held them into place like Hermann was some old man prone to forgetting where he’d left them. Granted, Hermann acted like he was a bajillion years old but that was besides the point. 

“ _Newton,_ what is that ridiculous looking contraption you are wearing?”

“Um, _hello?_   Infrared light source. Isn’t it cool, it makes me look like a Dalek. Ha! Exterminate.” Newton took a rigid stance for a second, sticking his arms out awkwardly while turning stiffly like the throwback television show villain he was referencing. It didn’t look like a normal headlamp, that was for certain. Instead it was half a sphere with about two dozen nobs coming off of it that Hermann assumed were the light sources. “It’s supposed to give a better over all illumination with the infrared light than just a straight light source. I fashioned the headgear myself.” Newton threw in a little swagger at his ingenuity only to throw the lamp off center and managing to knock his glasses off to the floor. _Idiot._

Newton dropped down, feeling around for his glasses as Hermann watched in the most unhelpful manner he could. _Bastard._ The late afternoon light was fading leaving the lobby dim since the electricity had long been turned off in the place, and Newton found himself fishing around on the dusty floor far longer than he’d hoped when there was a knock from somewhere in the building. 

“You checked to-” Hermann had started to speak, but his words were cut off with a strangled sort of sound as the fear engulfed them both as the shared memory of another cramped space hit hard. Newton felt like he’d gotten punched in the gut with it as he frozen, hands held out in front of him as he could remember the dusty smell mingling with the sweat of the mass of people behind him. The vibrations in the floor and the _air_ as something tried to break in from above him, the taste of dirt and sweat and blood in his own mouth as he finally found his glasses just before the thing broke through. “Dear God, Newton.” 

He came back to the present to find Hermann now down besides him on the ground, cane discarded as he stared at Newton in shock. It wasn’t the first time they had ghost drifted, though it had slowly been starting to increase in frequency. It wasn’t normally quite so...vivid though. 

“Sorry, yeah...I’m pretty sure that was my bad,” Newton said, swallowing down the taste of bile in the back of his throat while his brain just soaked up the luxurious feel of chemicals being released. Hermann glared at him for a second though it didn’t carry the full weight of pure loathing that it normally contained as he carefully picked up Newton’s glasses and offered them to him. “Thanks.” Newton mumbled a bit, but for once Hermann didn’t lecture him on speaking up or using crisp diction. The noise came again from down one of the halls, faintly now as though whatever it was had moved away from them. 

“Are you completely certain we are alone here?” 

“Yeah man, the place is supposed to be cleared out completely. When I found it online there were other groups who had come in here to investigate, and they never found anyone else lurking around. Well...anyone else living,” Newton said, doing spooky fingers in Hermann’s direction which seemed completely lost on the man. 

“Perhaps it would be best if we called the cab driver back and left. We don’t know that there isn’t a transient who has taken up living here, and they may not appreciate our intrusion.” Newton gave a laugh at that, pulling himself up off the floor before offering Hermann a hand. The other man took it, pulling to right himself and gather his cane while sending Newton a dour look. “I fail to see what is so humorous.” 

“You’re totally freaked out by this place, aren’t you Hermann? It was probably a raccoon or something else that’s cute a fluffy.” 

“Raccoons are hardly ‘cute and fluffy’ Newton, they can be dangerous and carry diseases-” Newton performed a dramatic eyeroll that Hermman should have been envious of if he was paying attention.

“We’ll avoid the disease ridden raccoons then, as well as the territorial transients which would be kind of an awesome band name. Come on, lets head up to the second story and find somewhere we can set up shop. That way we can have some of these puppies set up before dark.” Newton patted at one of the cameras on the counter before shoving the considerably lighter bag at Hermann to carry. He gathered his pile of toys up in his arms haphazardly before turning to start up the stairs to the right of the desk. 

“It would have been easier had you left them in the bag, Newton.” 

“Eh, this way I have them at the ready if Casper jumps out at us. Hurry up old man, don’t want to be left behind with the transients,” Newton said with a chuckle though he slowed his pace on the stairs so he didn’t leave Hermann behind to struggle on his own. They’d find a decent room they could make their center of operations and then Newton would do most of the leg work from there setting up the cameras where he wanted them. The second floor was supposed to be the ‘hot spot’ for activity, and though he wouldn’t admit it he felt a little better being up there than downstairs with whatever had been knocking around down the hall on the first floor. He’d have to double check to make sure he’d remembered the other equipment he’d packed when they settled. Mako and Raleigh had both suggested a few things when he’d told them about his plan to come here, and he’d about ignored the suggestions after feeling annoyed by their shared look of doubt at how magnificent his plan was. 

“Bear mace.” That was Raleigh’s suggestion in case they came across something more than rodents. Mako had followed that up with, “And perhaps a taser...for Dr. Gottlieb since his leg is bad.” He had a feeling she’d thrown in that last part just to make him feel a little less indignant at the suggestion he couldn’t take care of himself. 

“This is going to be awesome, Hermann!”

“Yes, I’m sure...” Hermann did have a special ability to instill pure sarcasm into as few words as possible. _Shut up, buzzkill, this will be awesome._ Newton mentally stuck his tongue out at Hermann as he reached the landing on the stairs and took a deep breath of musty, old ghost filled air. _Awesome indeed._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to get a little weird, well, at least for Newton.

This was so not awesome. God, this was so far from awesome that it had leapt completely off the ‘awesome’ scale and onto the ‘mind numbingly boring’ scale only to drop off the edge of that into ‘time has fully stopped now cause this is ridiculously boring’ scale. Hermann, of course, was enjoying it immensely as he sat quietly on the dusty old bed that he had laid his coat out on top of. He’d been reading up on recent journals that he’d lacked the time to keep up on when they’d been swamped with work leaving Newton to tinker with the cameras and try in multiple places to capture EVPs and not a goddamn ghostly thing had happened. 

He’d finally wandered out of the room again because if he’d sat for any longer he was going to fall asleep, and if that happened it’d just be proving Hermann right. He’d taken his recorder, a camera and the EMF detector with him and after some debate he’d wandered back downstairs. It was completely dark now except for the glow of moonlight coming in through the uncovered windows across the lobby as he took the stairs slowly. It’d been silent since earlier, but it was almost eleven at night now and maybe a little chillier than Newt had expected.

“First floor lobby, Dr. Newton ‘I am bored out of my mind’ Geiszler on my own since my lab partner has decided that reading is a productive experimental activity. Of course, leaving it to me to wander around this big ol' empty place on my own and end up horrifically murdered by some ghost or ‘transient’. Geez, Hermann...” _Or I’m dead, and I’d like you to know that it’s all your fault._ Newton shook his head at the thought. It was the second time it had crossed his mind tonight, the first being when he had unpacked the voice recorder for the first time at the front desk. In retrospect he knew that wasn’t the best thing for him to have left for his pretentious lab partner to find seeing as he _had_ almost died. Hermann had been so terrified and concerned it had made Newton wonder...

But no, all wondering aside he knew where he stood with Hermann. Maybe. Possibly. Ok, he really wasn’t sure where he stood with the man at all. He knew they were both fond of each other, but it had been a bit too confusing amongst the jumble of the second drift to catch whether Hermann’s fondness was quite the same as his fondness. That didn’t matter though, because he was here to catch ghosts and not to explore the potential tensile strength of fondness between him and the resident grouch. Newton huffed as he made his way across the lobby, glancing down towards the hall they’d heard the movement in earlier before letting himself drop into an oversized and apparently dust filled chair. 

The particles danced up around him causing Newton a small coughing fit, cursing softly as he tried to catch his breath. This had been a disaster of an idea so far, and was doing nothing to scratch that itch of dullness that had settled over things. He needed a fix, though preferably not the kind of fix he’d gotten at the recalled terror of the underground shelter. No, he was looking for the driving scientific itch of discovering something massive and seemingly uncontrollable to rein in with superior intellect and science. Well, he better get to that experimentation thing... _sigh._

“Is there anyone or thing here with me? Have anything to say? Maybe do something profound that will make Hermann stand in slack jawed wonder.” Maybe sarcasm wasn’t the way to win ghosts over. Newton allowed himself to slump back in the chair again, though not quite so violently to avoid sending more dust up into the air around him. He sat listening for something, anything, to happen, and seemed to suddenly realize that something had. He’d at some point fallen asleep, because he awoke with a start feeling confused for a second where he was. Well, that was great Dr. Geiszler, wonderful form on that experimenting front. 

Newton sat up, stretching his arms over his head while looking around to make sure Hermann hadn’t seen his transgression when he froze suddenly in that awkward position with arms up in the air as he stared at the form standing at the bottom of the stairs. It was a young boy who looking vaguely familiar and seemed to be watching him with eager anticipation. 

“Uh...hey, little guy...?” Newton said, lowering his arms and suddenly wishing he knew where the camera had slipped to between the arm and cushion of the chair. He started to feeling around for it, but it was like him speaking had set the boy off as he ran towards the hall. _Shit_. Newton took off after him without the camera, and really sort of hoping that hadn’t been the decoy child sent to lure him off to some terrible end. 

The hallway was dark and disorienting even compared to the lobby, and Newton had to slow his roll some to make sure he wasn’t going to plow right over the kid on accident. He put his arms out in front of him, trying to feel around as he moved slowly down the hall and listening for where the kid had gone to. 

“Hey kid, I’m not gonna hurt you. I just want to...talk and not be possessed or sacrificed or anything of that nature,” Newton called out, cursing as his shin hit some piece of wooden furniture that had been left sitting along one wall. “Kid?” He looked up at the sound in front of him and found a woman staring at him with a terrified expression. “Hey lady, it’s ok...I’m not a ghost or anything.” He looked down to make sure the side table wasn’t about to take him out again, and when he looked back she was gone. 

“You’re supposed to catch me.” 

“Wha-?” Newton turned quickly at the voice, now slamming his hip into that goddamn table. What exactly is the point of side tables? There is none, that’s what, they were demonic things that existed solely for you to run into their sharp little corners when being mentally screwed with by people who may or may not be living. The little kid was back though having gotten behind him somehow, and Newt wondered if the little fucker had ducked into a room or something. “H-hey there, champ.” Ok, so he wasn’t super good with potentially supernatural children. Real children? He was a rockstar with, but he was slightly out of his element here. 

“You’re supposed to catch me. It’s no fun if you don’t actually try to catch me.” 

“Oh...um...all right?” Newton hesitated, cause did he really want to know? _Yes, yes you absolutely want to know Geiszler. God, what are you? A pussy? No, you are a rockstar._ Still, he hesitated for a moment as he reached out towards the kid only to find himself alone in the hall again. “Oh...oh shit man. What the fuck...” Why had he left the camera? Where was the damn EMF detector? Dammit, it’s not a scientific discovery if he has no proof. He looked behind himself half expecting the little asshole to be standing there but was just greeted by the dark hallway looming behind him and he suddenly felt exposed. There was the familiar leap in his chest as his heart went into a little bit of an overdrive to push that fight or flight instinct, and he took a few steps back towards the lobby. He’d get the equipment, specifically the camera that would help him see more than a foot in front of himself, and then come back. No reason to go feeling his way down the hall blindly, right? _I should get Hermann._

No, nope, nyet, nein, not getting Hermann. At least not yet, not until he had something to prove to him that he wasn’t just crazy. _That’s impossible._ Newton made a noise of frustration as he mentally tried to actually push Gottlieb up in the stuffy old room where he was no doubt deeply involved in a love affair with the article on what new subatomic particle had just been discovered by his massive hard on collider or whatever. _You know that’s the incorrect terminology, stop being vulgar._  

“Oh my god, get out of my head right now Hermann,” Newton said angrily, happy to find the lobby looked normal and relatively creepy child free at this moment. He headed directly to the chair and pulled the cushion off to find the camera had slipped down to sit cozily with its buddy the EMF detector. He grabbed them both, reaching up to hit the infrared light into what he hoped was on mode as he opened the camera up to start recording. Ok, so the light had already been on and he’d just turned it off, easy fix. Newt hit the button again, the room suddenly going bright green on the screen before fading into a focused monochrome as the camera made the necessary adjustment to the flood of light. 

He took a deep to steady himself before he turned to start back towards the hallway to try and catch this little ass that was toying with him when he found himself face to face with the woman instead. She was still staring at him like he was the ghost, and a few tense seconds passed of the two of them both staring in silent terror that likely looked pretty comical to any outsider that could have been watching. 

“Ok, look, I’m not a ghost-” And then she was screaming which turned into him screaming as she suddenly was ripped up into the air and then disappeared into nothing and oh my god what the hell was that. Newton was panicking, he was panicking so hard because that woman just got _ripped_ up into the air like some giant force had just swept her up and oh my god...

“Newton...Newton, calm down and look at me. Newton!” He was on the floor and Hermann was there too kneeling between his legs and gripping his face trying to get the biologist to just look at him. 

“Where? Where is she? What happened to her?” 

“Who Newton? There is no one else here,” Hermann said, voice even as he tried to reassure him but no, Newton knew that there was someone else here. There was definitely someone else here and holy shit what had he just seen. _The camera._

“The camera, I got it on the camera. I had to have.” Newton pushed Hermann’s hands aside, turning to try to find where he’d dropped it and found the camera was sitting besides him still running. Hermann was watching him silently with that look on his face that he’d had after finding Newton in the lab immediately following that first drift. It was all wide brown eyes and tense-jawed concern as he sat back a little, wincing as his leg complained. “Here...it should be about...” Newton had rewound back several minutes to that first bright flare of the light and then hit play. He watched as he turned around, but... “No...no it should be here. It only makes sense for it to be here, Hermann. She was standing right there and then...then...” 

“Newton...it is late. I think perhaps you had fallen asleep in the chair and had a dream which you have interpreted as being rea-”

“No, no don’t you dismiss me again. This really happened, right before my eyes, so don’t you dismiss me like before.” Hermann was taken aback by the comment, and Newton felt a moment of guilt over the look that crossed the man’s face. _Why did you have to say he’d be to blame if you died back then, Newton?_ “Look, alright, I wasn’t dreaming. She was there just like the kid was there.” 

“Newton...I...” Hermann was trying to figure out how to dismiss him without actually doing so, but the truth was that it did sound crazy. Maybe he had been dreaming the whole thing, but no...he definitely wasn’t dreaming the part after he got the camera. He could _see_ where he picked the camera up and turned around, but she wasn’t there. Newton took a deep breath as he glanced around the very empty and quiet lobby as he tried to decide if he could have been having some lucid dream or something of the sort. Hermann was just staring at him like he was afraid of what Newton might do next, and he just couldn’t take that, man. He preferred arguing and condescending Hermann to this horrible level of uncertainty from a man he was fairly positive had never felt uncertain before in his life. 

“Look, you’re right. I probably was just dreaming. Let’s just head back up to the room and get some rest. This whole thing has been a bust anyway.” Newton closed the camera screen decidedly and pulled himself together. 

“Newton...”

“Where’s your cane anyway?” Newton clambered back to his feet, reaching down to pull Hermann up and keeping an arm around the man’s waist so he could lean against him for support. 

“I left it upstairs. I had dozed off at some point and when I awoke to you screaming I was worried you had managed to injure yourself and I left it behind.” 

“Aw, Hermann, you scrambled your way down here to save me from potentially diseased raccoons, didn’t you?” Newton laid the fake admiration on heavily, but he really did feel a twinge of something at the thought that Hermann would be so focused on finding Newt that he’d leave his cane behind. The thing had been like an extension of Hermann’s person for as long as he’d known him, though he now had the knowledge that it hadn’t always been that way when Hermann as younger. Hermann harumphed at him indigently, which was actually kind of adorable in a way since he wouldn’t meet Newton’s eye like he was embarrassed by it now. “How’d you even make it down the stairs?” 

“I am not an invalid, Newton, I am capable of movement without my cane if it is needed.” 

“You didn’t like...fall down them did you? Or maybe you did, and you just laid down and rolled down them to save time,” Newton said, teasing to help cut through the hint of awkwardness at having an actual tender moment between the two of them. Hermann was more than willing to look at him then as they started towards the stairs in question so that he could narrow his eyes dangerously at Newton.

“I did not _roll_ down the stairs, Newton.”

“Ha! Alright, Herms. I’m sure you didn’t.” Newton gave the other man an exaggerated wink, which if he wasn’t completely mistaken won him a small suppressed smile. It took them a while to navigate the stairs and he was almost convinced that he had been dreaming by the time they reached the room. He helped Hermann get settled on one side of the bed with his leg elevated on the bunched up duffle bag to try and head off any swelling from his heroic run down the hall. Newton then let himself fall back on the other side of the bed, earning him another look from his lab partner in crime. “What?”

“Are you really sleeping here too?” 

“Well, yeah. I figured you’d be cool with it since we’re not really in a familiar place and I’m apparently having epic night terrors. It will save you another roll down the hall if I wake up screaming again.” 

“I did _not_ roll, Newton.” 

“Mmm, right, no rolling involved.” Newton stifled a yawn, feeling a moment of panic again at the thought of trying to actually sleep but he thought just maybe he could manage it with Hermann right there. The bed was wide enough for them both, but he could feel the bit of heat radiating off the other man. “Get some sleep, Hermann.” Whatever Hermann’s response Newton didn’t catch it since, my god, the man mumbled it under his breath before trying to settle himself down to get comfortable. Newton thought about calling him on his diction, but was coming down off his adrenaline high and was feeling too drained to care enough to do so. 

He heard Hermann sigh quietly besides him as the man finished shifting about, and finally stilled to try and sleep. _Ok brain...no more epically horrible dreams if that’s what that was, alright?_ Yep, he could sleep, he could totally sleep. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann begins experiences some of the unusual phenomena taking place in the hotel though comes to his own conclusion on what is happening.

                Hermann sighed as he carefully sat up aiming not to wake Newton again despite how unrestful the man’s sleep appeared to be. He grabbed his phone to look at the time to find only twenty minutes had passed and he mentally cursed his lab partner, this empty shell of a hotel and that damn dream. Newton knew that he picked up on the flashes of memory that still battered the man’s brain from time to time when they were awake and in close proximity, but Hermann had not felt the need to tell him yet that he also was privy to them when Newton dreamt. It had at least not been those moments in the lab again, the one where Newton was alone and ready to die to prove his point that drove guilt through Hermann’s heart anew with each reiteration.

                No, it had once more been those short few minutes in the dark with the taste of dust and bile in the back of his throat, eyes unfocused as he felt desperately for his glasses while something terrible and wondrous tried to break through the concrete above. The fear always woke Hermann up and he marveled at the fact that Newton continued to sleep through the rest of the nightmare derived from his own horrifying experiences. He found his cane in the darkness so that he could stand, needing to rid himself of the dream before he could possibly consider attempting sleep once more. He found the flashlight he’d been reading with earlier, not turning it on quite yet as he put his hand on the door handle. He paused then, stopping to look back at Newton lying there spread out in his typical fashion as though even in sleep he felt the need to fill as much space with his presence as possible. Hermann felt some doubt at leaving the man alone given what had happened previously when Newton had, by all indication, dozed off downstairs only to wake up screaming. Coming to this place had been a terrible idea, and he couldn’t fathom why he had continued to agree to the trip even after he had discovered on his own that the hotel in question was no longer functioning, that there was no planned talk in which Newton had been invited to, and that it was indeed all a lie put in place by Newton to lure Hermann here so they could ‘hunt ghosts’.

                Hermann sighed as he stepped out in the hallway, letting the door latch behind him before pressing the button on the bottom of the flashlight to illuminate his path. It had been Mr. Becket who had admitted this final detail to him. Hermann had been surprised by that, but the man had voiced that he was concerned about the trip not only due to the dubious and potentially dangerous nature of the place they were going but also for Newton’s frame of mind. Dr. Geiszler had not dealt with things well those first few weeks after his dual drifts into the Kaiju hive mind. Hermann had struggled as well as fragmented pieces of alien recollection had floated up amongst the already confusing mix of human memory that had been forced into his head. Newton had had it far worse, however, to the point where the man seemed to barely sleep. He’d been improving but there were moments still where Hermann found himself wondering about the mental state of his friend. Tonight, it had been finding Newton screaming and terrified by some specter that only he could see in the abandoned hotel foyer.

                Hermann found himself at the top of the stairs looking down into the grand room now, imagining what it had looked like even just a year ago when the place was still in use. Had it fallen into disrepair so quickly or had it started that downward trend long before the owners lost it to bankruptcy? What exactly had Newton witnessed down there and could there have been anything more to it than the man experiencing a night terror brought on by his own trauma and the horror story setting? Who was the woman he claimed he had seen? He leaned against his cane after eying the banister doubtfully, mistrustful of it despite it having supported his weight as he’d half ran and half tripped down these stairs only a short while before. He had been terrified himself.

                The footsteps ran past behind him on the top landing in a flurry making Hermann almost miss a step, and he had to grab the handrail tightly to keep himself from falling down the staircase. He took a second to catch his breath and contemplate the potential outcomes that such a fall could have ended in before turning angrily.

                “Newton, if you would reframe-“ Hermann stopped, staring at the empty landing. He pulled himself carefully back to the top of the stairs to look down the halls on either side, shining the flashlight down but finding no sign of his juvenile companion. He started back down towards the room they had decided to inhabit for the night, opening the door fully ready to lecture but finding Newton still lying in bed asleep. The man had moved some to claim Hermann’s now empty half of the mattress and having rolled over onto his stomach to hug a pillow close, however, it was evident that Newton was still fully involved in one of the deeper sleep cycles.

                Hermann turned to look back down the hall, feeling a sense of unease rise from the pit of his stomach. He had been right, they were not here alone. He was about to call it all off right then, wake Newton despite how badly the man needed the sleep and call themselves a cab to take to the closest _in service_ hotel to spend the rest of the night in. He was about to turn when his light fell on the boy standing down the hallway from him and watching with a look of youthful indignation.

                “Why do they never listen to me?” He sounded angry and lost, and Hermann found he could empathize with those feelings right at that moment. He looked past the child for others, but by all appearances the boy was on his own looking as though he’d been crying. “They treat me like a kid, and they never listen. If they would just listen…”

                “Young man, I do not appreciate you attempting to-“

                “I know just as much as they do! More! Why will none of them ever listen?” Hermann felt a twist of compassion at the hurt in the boy’s voice, and he dropped the scorning tone as he took a step towards the child.

                “Young man, are you all right? Where are your parents?”

                “They never listen!”

                “Perhaps your parents are listening despite it appearing that they are not because they are trying to direct you to what is the right course of action. Now, I do not believe this place is safe for a boy of your age to be wandering alone in the dark. We can call your parents, I’m sure they’re worried-“

                “You’re just like the rest of them.” The boy didn’t scream it at him in irrational anger like Hermann would have expected, but it was said with a cold sort of bitterness that bit even deeper as though Hermann had truly and personally offended the young lad. The boy turned and ran then, past the top of the stairs and into the darkness of the hall on the other side. Hermann stared after him before giving a quiet curse under his breath. He couldn’t with good conscious leave the child to run off and get injured, and now that he knew it was simply a child the unease had been replaced with his own unique mix of exasperation and concern. The child had reminded him of someone though he didn’t have the time to figure out whom as he started down the hall at a far more rational and cautious pace than the boy.

                “Young man, it really is not advisable for you to be running through here in the dark. Who knows what hazards there may be or if there is any damage to the structural integrity of this building. I tried to explain the same concept to my colleague…” Hermann’s steps slowed as he noticed someone standing in the middle of the hall way messing with something just inside one of the rooms. “Newton?” Dr. Geiszler had turned to face him though didn’t acknowledge Hermann who was trying to compute just how the other man had gotten past him. Something wasn’t right here, and Hermann’s desire to leave this place spiked back to a new local maxima. “Newton what are you doing?”

                “Kaiju-Human drift experiment, take one. The uh…the brain segment-“ Hermann felt a twist in his gut as Newton started talking into the recorder in his hand, shirt sleeves rolled up to show his tattoos as he moved to mess with something just inside the room across from the first.

                “Newton this is not appropriate. Whatever this is if you wished to further discuss the circumstances of your first drift-“ Newton just kept on talking, repeating the words that Hermann had listened to later on the voice recorder without the man’s knowledge while moving about as though he was in the lab preparing for the drift itself.

                “…It which case, ha, I won. Or I’m dead, and I’d like you to know that it’s all your fault. It really is, you know, you drove me to this. In which case, ha, I also won…sort of.”

                “Newton stop this,” Hermann said, his voice dropping in distress as he moved towards the man. There was a sudden panicked response as Newton placed the drift apparatus on his head, and Hermann forced himself to run as he realized that Newton was really going to do it. He was going to subject himself and Hermann to this again just to prove his point, just to prove that Hermann should have listened to him and not dismissed his theory that had seemed so out of left field at the time and so terribly dangerous.

                “I’m going in three…two…one.”

                “Newton, no!” Hermann didn’t get to him in time, and Newton pressed that damned button. Hermann tried to lunge for him to stop it but found himself grabbing at thin air as he found he was the only one in the hallway. He turned, trying to locate just where his companion had dropped to but he was well and truly alone. “Newton?”

                “They never listen to me.” Hermann’s back went ramrod straight as the boy’s voice came from behind him. He turned slowly, hands gripping his cane and the flashlight respectively as he brought his focus round on the child thinking how familiar he looked once more. “And you’re just like them.”

                “Newton.” The word came out as a pained whisper as the boy stared at him in an accusatory manner, and Hermann felt the floor drop out from beneath him. He found himself leaning against the wall staring at the young version of his own Newton as the boy just watched him. “Dear lord…” He was drifting, of course, he was ghost drifting. It was far more intense than it had been before, far more disorienting but he had seen this. He had seen it both in Mr. Becket and Ms. Mori at times when something triggered some memory that wasn’t fully their own and they’d get lost in it for a moment or two. Newton and he had been doing it on rare occasions over the last month and a half since they had shared their own drift, but it had never been this strong or this painful. It was as though Newton’s memories had decided to rebel against him, using the precise moment that was the sharpest dagger they could aim at him.

                “They treat me like a child.” Of course this version of Newton wasn’t really speaking to him, if he focused and pushed aside the irrational terror that Newton’s former self was calling him on his own pretentious and dismissive actions towards the man when he’d needed his validation the most Hermann could recognize that. This was a part of a conversation Newton had once had with his father, a whisper of a moment that Hermann had plucked out of the man’s head mid-drift that was now playing out in front of him in an oddly mirrored way. He only realized he was chasing the moment when he found himself disoriented, feeling as though he was both himself there now sitting on the floor where he had slid down along the wall in his shocked state and the young boy who was frustrated and hurt by the actions of the adults around him. Those adults who hadn’t given him the time and respect they should have, because if they had just listened to this brilliant young mind they would have caught on just how advanced and glorious he was.

                Hermann forced himself out of the moment and to his feet, knowing it was dangerous to keep chasing that feeling of duality within his own mind. When he had managed to right himself and shine the light down the dark abyss of the hallway he found that he was the only occupant once more. He needed to get back to the room, back to the Newton that was here and now, not only to remind himself where the here and now truly was but also to make certain that Newton wasn’t drifting as well.

                It took him a few steps to become steady once more, but then Hermann walked with purpose as his mind contemplated the complicated mathematics behind the not-as-yet fully explored phenomena of ghost drifting with one’s partner and the implication it could have. Newton would be better at this, he wouldn’t approach this with mathematics as Hermann was wont to do. He was the neuroscientist who would be able to make the link between cause and causation, the complex neural pathways and how they could possibly link two people through space and time. No, that would take both of them, Hermann understood the basis of string theory that could account for the spanning of the dimensional space that would lead to a link where there should not be one.

                Hermann almost walked into him this time, Newton’s form coming out of nowhere as the man was crouched down on the floor feeling about. Hermann stopped short, trying to pinpoint if this was his current and present Newton or some past version. It was the clothes that gave it away first, the black leather jacket and white button up, the disheveled appearance and pitch of panic in Newton’s voice as he looked for those damn glasses.

                “This is the worst!” Hermann could feel the give of the concrete beneath him as he struck at it again at the same time that relief flooded him as he found his glasses mixed with the fatigue he felt at seeing this terrifying scene play out around him for the third time that night. Wait, something wasn’t right, even more so than had occurred back with his dual frame of mind with the child version of Newton. There was a third conscious tug on his mind as he broke through the concrete to stare down at Newton, as the relief of finding his glasses was too quickly replaced with the sheer dread at seeing his other self suddenly visible in front of him, jaws opening as his tongue reached out to…to…

                Hermann was throwing up in a rather undignified fashion over the bannister, adding to the detriment of the hotel’s decaying foyer below as he reeled from the confusing mesh of remembrance. He had to repeat to himself that it had been a _memory_ and nothing more. It wasn’t like the times he’d felt the tug of feelings from Newton when the man wasn’t even in sight, or those seconds where it was almost as though he could guess what Newton was thinking. This was all memories implanted into Hermann’s frame of consciousness during the drift, things he had pulled and plucked out in his search for useful information amongst the confusion of two human minds intruding into the center of a hive mind. A hive mind that held and shared all the memories of those it had controlled and spoken to over the past decade, including Otachi who had torn a hole through a street to get to Dr. Geiszler who had already once before intruded and made himself known to that mass of drone brain being lead onwards by their creators.

                When Hermann was finished regurgitating what little food he had left in his system he sat himself down hard on the floor for the second time that night. He took deep breaths, keeping his eyes closed to ground himself in that moment and away from any potential bombardments of further memories.

                “Hermann?” He said a small prayer to any form of God that may live on some dimensional plane they had yet to discover or fully explore within the universe, no, not just their universe, within any universe that may or may not exist within the theoretical multiverse, that this was his Newton; his Newton within his current and present timeframe and no other. Hermann turned his head as he opened his eyes and could see the outline of Newton’s form down the hall near the door of the room they’d been sharing. The man was hanging back in the shadows, seeming to be feeling rather uncertain himself about approaching his colleague. Hermann couldn’t truly blame him for that, he likely looked a complete mess not to mention if Newton had been privy to any of the last few minutes when Hermann had found himself so completely uncertain which him was truly _him._ “Please be the real you and not some weird ghost you, Herms. Come on man, say something relevant to this moment. Tell me what the calculated amount of dark energy contained within our universe is or _something_.”

                Hermann felt his focus sharpen as Newton’s voice came to him out of the darkness sounding shaky and uncertain. The man had been ghost drifting as well, and whatever he’d been seeing had clearly shaken him up just as badly as Hermann felt. Hermann found his cane where he had discarded it dangerously near the edge of the stairs, and was glad that it hadn’t gone rolling down them as Newton had assumed Hermann himself had done earlier that night. He dragged himself to his feet, taking a step down the hall towards Newton who he could barely make out in the pale haze of light from the flashlight shining from its spot on the floor. Newton stepped back away from him, and Hermann froze in place to avoid frightening the man. _Why would he be frightened of me_? Even in their shared past he couldn’t think of a time Newton had ever seemed frightened of Hermann in any way.

                “Newton, it’s me.”

                “Amount of dark energy, man.” Hermann sighed softly, fighting the tremble within the muscles of his bad knee as it begged for him to sit or lie down somewhere again.

                “Newton, calculations have predicted that within our universe the _amount_ of dark energy to explain the increasing velocity in which our universe is expanding should be one-point-three-eight times 10 to the negative one-hundred-twenty-third magnitude, however, that is not a confirmed number as we still had not fully come to comprehend the entire nature of dark energy or even our universe despite recent leaps and bounds forced by the necessity of our situation upon the opening of the breach.” Hermann was leaning heavily on his cane, slipping into his “lecture voice” as Newton had come to call it.

                “Oh thank God it is you,” Newton said after a pause in which Hermann had regarded him uncertainly through the dim light. Hermann was a bit taken aback with the speed in which they went from standing a few feet apart to Newton suddenly being pressed against him, the man’s arms wrapped tightly around him as Newton…was Newton crying? Hermann put his arms around him, forgoing the cane once more though Newton was more than compensating at the moment with his tight hold on him.

                “I am sorry, Newton, I should not have left you alone. I didn’t fully comprehend what was happening when I did,” Hermann said gently, and Newton suddenly pushed away from him so he could look Hermann in his face. The man’s glasses were askew and a bit fogged up as he stared at Hermann in shock and then apparently relief. They had an awkward moment when Hermann’s knee tried to give out without the support of either cane or lab partner, and Newton had to grab ahold of him again to keep him standing.

                “Dude, you’ve seen them too? This place is totally and completely fucking haunted. I’ve been too terrified to even _start_ trying to make any sort of scientific sense of this. It’s awesome and horrifying and confusing as hell, they’ve been playing with my head making me see you and me and then there’s that boy and the….” Newton blanched suddenly and snapped his mouth shut at whatever else he’d been seeing. “Anyway, have you been seeing the same shit, cause man this is all over the place.”

                “Newton?”

                “I can’t even begin to try and figure out what would best describe it. Maybe it’s some form of weakness in the dimensional…mesh, like the breach but more like a window instead of a door. That’s gonna be your department, dude, I can completely help but I need to focus on the neural implications of intelligence surviving death or the possibility of intelligent humanoid beings looking in on us from some-“

                “Newton!” Hermann had to shout it at the man and he felt a bit of guilt when Newton’s stared at him a bit agape. The man squared his shoulders while simultaneously narrowing his eyes at Hermann, and he knew that Newton was preparing for an argument.

                “Don’t even say this is some hallucination or something like that, Hermann, because I swear-“  

                “We are ghost drifting, Newton. They are not ghosts in the sense you are leading yourself to believe, they are fragments of memories and nothing more.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newton wakes to find Hermann gone from the room, and quickly regrets the decision to go and seek the man out as the energy of the hotel hits him full force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning out less crack and more angst than I had originally pictured in my head guys. It took on a life of its own pretty much right away after chapter one.

                Newton had woken up alone in the bed, and had sat up feeling confused and disoriented by his surroundings until the remains of his dreams had faded away substantially enough for him to remember the hotel and its purpose. Where had Hermann gone? He stared at the empty space in the bed that had been vacated long enough ago that there was only the hint of humanly warmth left in Hermann’s place. The man wouldn’t have wandered off on his own, would he? Of course not, this was Hermann he was thinking about. The man didn’t have an adventurous bone in his body. But all current evidence pointed to the contrary right then, and Newton swung his legs out of bed to find his missing lab partner.

                He stood hesitating in the threshold of the room as he stared down the long hallway so full of darkness that his flashlight barely seemed to penetrate it. _You’re psyching yourself out, man. We’ve already decided all that business before was a classic example of the ‘It was all just a dream’ scenario that movies play up far too often._ He heard something down the hall opposite, and turned the light in that direction where it illuminated the landing of the stairs. Hermann was standing there, and Newton breathed a sigh of relief as he finally left the protective barrier that he imagined the room had thrown over it in some completely irrational part of his mind.

                “Jesus Hermann, what the hell are you doing standing out here?” Hermann was staring down the opposite hall with his back to Newton as intently as he had always stared at those damn chalkboards. In fact the man didn’t even respond when Newton spoke up, and he wasn’t about to admit that he pouted a little at the idea that he was being _ignored_. “Hermann!”

                “There has to be a mistake somewhere.” Hermann sounded tired, and Newton paused his steps as the man let his glasses so that they dangled from the ridiculous chain so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. “I need more data.”

                “Herms?”

                “Man, maybe what you need is sleep. You’ve been at this for almost twenty-four hours.” Newton almost jumped out of his skin when a voice, no…when _his_ voice suddenly came from beside him. He looked at the Other verse version of himself that now walked past, white button-up shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and blue covered gloves held carefully out to his sides as he moved to stand besides Other verse Hermann.

                “Ok…so this is happening…” Newton mumbled under his breath, taking a few slow cautious steps back suddenly worried about the other him and not possibly actual Hermann noticing him there. He needed to get back to the safety room and whatever magical power it had to keep the human like imprints out. _Actual Hermann is out here somewhere, man. You can’t just leave him to be taken over and possessed by other verse Hermann._ Well, fuck. Still, the room was his best plan at the moment and there he could formulate an idea on how to find actual Hermann.

                “You were supposed to catch me.” Newton jumped, spinning to face the new threat and stumbling his way back until he slammed against the opposite wall hard enough to jar his shoulder. “You were supposed to catch me.”

                “Holy…fuck…kid…” The strange little boy was staring at him sullenly again while the K-science team of the Other verse continued conversing down the hall as though none of this was happening. The creepy little punk was standing directly in front of the door to his safety room, and Newton whined in the back of his voice.

                “Why didn’t you catch me?” God, there were tears now, and did that kids knee just… _twist?_ Rush of endorphins and adrenaline and perfectly good chemicals were being wasted on terror and fear and running…running down the hall away from the three figures haunting the stairs and into the darkness, did he forget his flashlight? No, it was there but he was too busy running to point it in any sort of sufficient and steady direction so random flashes of empty hall were all he was going to get right then. And then there was a wall.

                Newton managed to stop himself before he ran straight into this wall, but it was a near thing as he skidded to a halt and his hands went out in front of him to absorb some of the shock of the collision he fully expected to take place. _Good job, Newton, you’ve gotten yourself corner again._ With the thought the ceiling seemed to rattle with impact and Newton shrunk down towards the floor instinctively.

                “Ok Newton, you are a scientist, a rationale and highly intelligent human being who has faced down monstrous aliens that came out of the ocean. You have worked in high stress situations for the last decade while managing to give consistent and accurate results, you managed to pull together a working PONS machine from scrap and drift, not once, but twice with said monstrous aliens and once with your overly analytical and big ol’ asshole of a lab partner who has now left you alone in a horrifically confirmed haunted hotel while he does fuck knows what…” _Take a breath._ “Take a breath.” Newton repeated the words that echoed through his brain in said lab partner’s voice and then did as instructed. “You shouldn’t be running from the thing you are studying.” _Yeah right._ “Shut up.”

                Newton never claimed to be good at pep talks even when they were self-directed, and history had shown on numerous occasions that people didn’t listen to him, including himself. Still, ghosts weren’t supposed to be able to hurt you, right? They were just like…images projected on the trans dimensional mesh. _Except all those shows where they discuss people being brutally attacked and possessed by demonic spirits._ Yeah, except those brain, but those were scripted. They were hardly the straight facts proven by empirical data collected by the scientific community in which he is a member. Right? Right. He was going to turn around and walk right back down the hall and scientifically study the shit out of this situation.

                Newton turned and he totally didn’t freeze in place both physically and mentally, he completely faced the situation with the sort of scientific detachment that Dr. Hermann ‘Nothing-fazes-me-except-you-using-my-first-name’ Gottlieb faced the entirety of human life with. He did not suppress a terrified scream that a small girl would be envious of as he stared into the face of _her._ She was just standing there mere inches from him with that look of fear that she’d given him in the lobby, not saying a word or making a sound. _Ok Newton, you can do this. You’re a rock star. Observe._ Well, she was crying…that much was obvious as her eyes were literally just inches from his.

                Subject is female, appears emotionally upset and frightened. She is crying and her eyes were blue and she looked like she’d been through both the spin cycle of a washing machine, time to take a step back Newton if you want to gather any more data. That was easy enough, as every neuron within his vast brain was firing off in a frenzy of _dear God, move now_. He steadied himself the best he could as he prepared for his next action which was far more of a direct order against the typical survival instincts which was to drop his eyes from her face, the thing most likely to convey her murderous intent in time for him to react, to take in the rest of her appearance.

                His eyes flickered down from her face to try for a split second, long enough to take in that she was wearing some sort of body armor in place of the typical clothing and the second that fact stuck in his brain was the moment she started screaming.

                “No, no, no nononononononono….” Newton wasn’t consciously aware that it was him talking in something just short of a whispered scream as she suddenly was ripped away up into the air to disappear into that ceiling that gave an ominous rattle once more.

                “You were supposed to catch me.” The words seemed to echo from somewhere down the hall and Newton clamped a hand over his mouth to stop the uncontrolled babbling that was being emitted from it. He needed to find Hermann, actual Hermann, human Hermann who would tell him he was dreaming or hallucinating or something but that would be more than willing to let Newton curl up against him in a ball because the man had suddenly developed that habit on the night where the dreams were the worst and Newton found himself knocking on Hermann’s door looking for an argument or comfort or just someone who knew. Now his brain was babbling in place of his mouth, and Newton tried to turn the stopcock on the thoughts filtering through at an alarming rate.

                “Newton?” _Oh thank god..._ Yeah, that thought was short lived as he saw Hermann down the hall but the man was stopping too far away, his attention focused on another form sitting on the floor with its back against the wall. “Newton what have you done?!”  Why was Hermann yelling at him like this was his fault? And did he feel like he’d heard those exact words before? He had enough to time to have that thought before things got really hectic as the world seemed to shatter around him. The ceiling caved in in front of him, and in the glow of blue light that reached through the opened wound of the world he saw the woman staring before her scream fractured things even more.

                “Catch me!”

                “You, keep talking.”

                “You’re insane.”

                “That’s impossible.” _Is it? Is it impossible?_

                “You can be mad at me all you want, Geiszler, doesn’t change that I’m going in with him.” _Well, don’t come crying to me when you die in that tin can._

                And all the while the screaming, the damn screaming. Newton closed his eyes against the surge of voices and sound and images, but it didn’t help shut it all out like he hoped for, prayed for. He curled up against the wall, hands pressed against his forehead as his fingers laced and gripped into his hair that was damp from sweat as he tried desperately to shut it out, turn it off. Someone was repeated the words ‘Stop it’ over and over, and he wasn’t certain it was him or not.

                “You were supposed to catch me.” The chaos ended just as abruptly as they started, and silence fell at last leaving Newton feeling shell shocked and drained. He slowly opened his eyes, looking out around his arms that were shielding his face and he saw familiar shoes standing in front of him with a cane completing the image. He looked up at Hermann who was standing over him giving him a look he didn’t honestly recognize. “You were supposed to catch me.”

                “What?” But Fake Hermann was gone again already before he got the word out. _You need to find Dr. Gottlieb._ The thought helped drag Newton to his feet, and he picked his way carefully down the hallway feeling a bit too fragile. They were ghosts, beings that were pressed into the fabric of time and space that came out to feed off the emotional baggage of those living being that came within their space. He didn’t recognize the woman, didn’t search for the meaning behind Fake adult Hermann mirroring the words of the kid with the twisted knee, didn’t question the ability of dragging out voices of people he’d known and cared for from thin air.

                Newton stopped as he saw Hermann sitting with his back against the railing of the bannister at the top of the stairs near the safe room. The sanctuary was being patrolled by them again, and Newton sighed as mentally the words _once more unto the breach, dear friends_ echoed uselessly in his mind, because what could this be if not another type of breach?

                “Hermann?” His voice sounded shakier than he thought it would, weak and small as it cut through the silence that hung heavy in that hall. Hermann opened his eyes and looked at him, and Newton gave a shaky and hopeful breath as he felt his world right itself again and come back into focus. “Please be the real you and not some weird ghost you, Herms. Come on man; say something relevant to this moment. Tell me what the calculated amount of dark energy contained within our universe is or _something_.” _God you sound whiny._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermann tries to force Newton into accepting that everything that has been happening is due to the two of them ghost drifting. Newton, for his own reasons, fights against the reality and the two struggle to come to terms without ending up in a full on fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally thought this might end up being the last chapter, but it looks like there's gonna be at least one more for me to wrap this up with. Thanks to everyone who's read it and who continues to read it. It's been my first serious dabbling into fan fiction in a long time, so I appreciate it. :)  
> You're all gorgeous and wonderful. <3

                Newton stared at him for a long minute as Hermann tried to let the information set in, but he sighed in disappointment as Dr. Geiszler shook his head and pulled back from him to take a few steps down the hall. Hermann bit his tongue about the forgetfulness of his lab partner as he used the wall to keep himself standing all while starting to formulate a theory on Newton’s recent actions. The man paced a few times while being unusually quiet, but then turned to point at Hermann rather dramatically.

                “Your theory has some inconsistencies, Herms. The visions of seeing ourselves throughout the course of the last…uh…” Newton paused, losing his steam for a second as he looked at his watch, “…twenty minutes would be consistent with the theory of ghost drifting within the context of an unusually strong post drift event, however, that does not explain all the factors such as the kid that keeps running around and disappearing and the…” Newton faltered again on this particular factor before pushing ahead to blurt the words out in a quick jumble. “…the terrified-screaming-floating-away-woman.”

                “Newton, why did you have us come here of all places? Why was it ghosts you chose to focus your newly re-energized scientific inquiries towards?” Hermann spoke with the utmost patience, and a hint of sympathy that Newton could just jump all over right then because he wasn’t a child, okay? He didn’t need his mathematically inclined lab partner preforming psychological analysis on him in the middle of the night while ghosts were just waiting to pop out and scare the life right out of him again.

                “Um, hello? What do you study right after you finish fighting off giant, trans-dimensional alien sea monsters but ghosts? It’s the next logical step, Hermann,” Newton said, his tone rising in a familiar way which meant this was about to turn into a full blown argument. Hermann took a deep breath, steadying himself and preparing to be the adult in this situation because the last thing they truly needed was to get into one of their fights. They had performed miracles before in the middle of their arguments in the lab when Newton had criticized his maths or Hermann had jabbed at the fact that Newton was struggling with a specific string of DNA coding, but that had always been work. They had never reached any emotional or personal revelations in this way, honestly they had had so few personal and emotional revelations during the last decade as far as each other were concerned. This particular emotional discovery was all Newton’s, but Hermann wished to help the man along with as much patience and tact as was humanly possible when one was confronted with an agitated Dr. Geiszler.

                “That is far from being the next logical step for most people, Newton, there is a reason behind it. Tell me about the woman.” Newton had stopped pacing to glare at him, the man puffing up in indignation until the mention of this woman again. The rapid speed in which the short statured man shrunk down and in on himself was alarming, and Hermann tentatively reached out to him to take his wrist so that he could pull him closer. “Newton.”

                “No.”

                “Then the child, tell me about the child.” Newton fidgeted but didn’t draw back from Hermann’s hold on him. In fact it felt like a tether right then despite just how frustrated and angry he was at the man. Hadn’t he learned not to _doubt_ him the last time? Hadn’t Hermann learned that, yes, of course Newton always had a reason behind what he did but it certainly didn’t have anything to do with a fragile emotional state brought on by the loss of almost every important human being in his life and the fragmented images of a life that weren’t his floating about in his brain post drift.

                “He-“

                “You were supposed to catch me.” Newton looked past his ‘I’m too much of a realist to believe in ghosts’ lab partner at the boy who stood in the hall. His knee was back to normal, but there was pain and betrayal on his face as he stared at Newton accusingly. It was the distance of Newton’s focus that made Hermann look over his shoulder keeping a careful hand planted on the wall so not to lose balance, but all he could see was the landing of the stairs behind him. “Why didn’t you catch me?” _Hermann’s knee is bad right now. You were holding him up before._ Newton snapped back to the solid person in the hall with him, and took hold of the man’s elbow feeling stupid and guilty as he realized how much of a struggle his colleague was having in order just to stand.

                “Thank you,” Hermann almost sighed the word as he let some of his weight lean into Newton. “Is the child there now?” Clearly the subject wasn’t going to be dropped, but the boy was still standing there staring and waiting for his answer.

                “Yeah…”

                “What does he look like, Newton?” Hermann was trying to guide him, to coax him into details and force him to take the perspective of an observer. The man was trying to get him to do just what Newton had attempted to achieve through his panic earlier; approach the situation scientifically.

                “I don’t know…he’s a kid?” He could feel the narrowed eyes of that look without having to turn to meet it, knew that if Hermann had his glasses on he’d be staring over them right then just dripping with ire. “He’s like seven or maybe eight, ok? Um…definitely Anglo-Saxon, pale complexion even for it, light brown hair in a ridiculous cut, healthy though upset about something. He keeps asking why I didn’t catch him or saying that I was supposed to.”

                Something changed in Hermann’s stance, a certain solidification into a rigid form as though he’d suddenly been cooled too rapidly and instead of tempering the steel of his body it had caused it to become more brittle than before. Newton turned to him, ghost child could go screw himself, something was wrong but already his second-in-command Ghostbuster was easing into a more natural, albeit pained, posture.

                “Hey, you ok? We need to get you sitting down? I’m being an asshole right now, we should get you into the safe room so you can sit down.”

                “I’m quite all right, Newton, however…I believe the child you are seeing is perhaps…” Hermann was hesitating, which wasn’t something that the man did often. Something was definitely wrong and it was probably Newton’s fault, because when it came to science he was a Rockstar but when it came to people Newton could be oblivious and rude and just a little more than stupid. He slipped an arm around him this time, taking as much of Hermann’s weight off his bad knee as he could as the kid echoed his accusation again.

                “Well, I’m catching you now, aren’t I? God, will you shut up!” Newton hadn’t perhaps meant to snap at the kid out loud, and for a second had the hope that maybe he was mistaken and that he hadn’t just half yelled at a child that only he could see. Hermann was staring at him, though his own gaze seemed a little distant as a child that Newton couldn’t see stood behind him asking why no one ever listened to him. Dr. Gottlieb, of course, pulled himself together first as he reached to nudge Newton’s chin so to turn his eyes away from the apparition and back in his direction.

                “Newton, that child is me. From what you are describing it is from right after I had my…accident where my knee got injured. It is not you that I am talking to but my older brother, Dietrich, who had promised to catch me when I jumped. I had blamed him and he had blamed himself though the truth of the matter was that we were young and a bit stupid in the false knowledge of our own invincibility and we had both been injured in the resulting tumble. It is not a ghost, it is a fragmented memory playing out on repeat. We are ghost drifting.”

                Hermann looked as though he had shared more than he had intended, but he accepted it quickly. There was no reason for Newton not to know, and clearly the man had the memory somewhere inside him if he was experiencing a part of the moment through the eyes of the child that Hermann had once been. Because, if there had been any doubt on his part that his hypothesis was incorrect it was wiped clean now. Newton _was_ drifting, he could see it in the man’s gaze when he focused on the empty space where his memories were playing out, could sense it in the distance that suddenly seemed to gape between them despite Newton being pressed against his side as Hermann’s literal crutch.

                Newton stared at the ghost of Hermann’s former self a little longer as he realized he did know this, could pull it up out of the jumbled mess of memories that didn’t belong to him yet still resided in his head. He’d climbed too high that day, but neither of them realized that. He’d always been good at climbing up, but down he’d never learned to tackle. It was having to stare at the ground beneath where the sense of how high up he was became more daunting than when his focus had been the heavens above, the clouds and blue sky and all that glorious space that seemed to hide behind it yet was always there. Jumping though, it was like flying, and he could close his eyes and trust his brother to catch him. He had leaped and Dietrich had realized too late that it wasn’t going to work this time. He had caught him, that was the thing, Dietrich had caught him but they had collided too hard and they had both gone down painfully and in a jumble. His leg had ended up under his brother somehot twisted at the wrong angle and shattered painfully with bright red colors dancing in his vision. Dietrich hadn’t been unscathed himself, two cracked ribs and a sprained wrist, not to mention the guilt that would hang between them for years. The guilt that sometimes still reared its head when Dietrich was witness to a moment of struggle that his younger brother failed to completely hide.

                Newton shook his head, coming out of the memory and hearing Hermann saying his name gently. He didn’t answer right away, taking a few moments to steady himself in his own mind. _You’re Newton Geiszler, scientist rockstar who saved the planet. You are in a creepy haunted hotel with your lab partner who is now a permanent fixture in your own brain, and hopefully will be a permanent fixture in your whole life if you haven’t pissed him off by dragging him into the Chinese version of the hotel from the Shining._

                “Newton?”

                “Yeah, sorry, ghost kid explained. You’re theory still has holes.” He heard Hermann take a deep breath beside him, and he wondered if the man had been holding it in and just waiting. Newton gave him a quick and distracted smile, starting them towards the safe room because he knew where Hermann was going next and he didn’t want to go down that particular alley.

                “The woman?” Newton nodded, wishing his other half would shut it until they were securely in the safe room because the last thing he needed was _her_ somehow knowing they were talking about her and showing up. The moment he’d thought that he knew he shouldn’t have because he could feel her there on his other side and he tried to just ignore her. He had to ignore her. “Is she here now?” Newton had made a distressed sort of noise, a slight whimper and he had turned towards Hermann more as though trying to block his view of the hall while still attempting to move them to the door of the room. He nodded again and Hermann resolutely planted his feet in place with all the strength and steadiness he could muster.

                “Herms.” It was a whimper and plea, and he almost faltered in his resolve but they had to deal with this. It was the entire driving force behind this ridiculous plan, it was the thing that would continue to haunt Newton if they didn’t deal with it here and now. He had to force the man to stare his own ghosts right in the face and deal with them. This particular ghost would be harder than all the rest.

                “Describe her to me, Newton.” He said it strictly though with a tender sort of understanding underlying it. This ghost was a part of him too, had been even before the drift though it was stronger now. That distance was there again as Newton stared at the door that he seemed to feel was some salvation. He was refusing to look to his left, and when he glanced at Hermann it was simply to plead again and it caused the man’s heart to ache to hear the pain in his colleague’s voice. “Tell me about her, Newt.”

                “Uh…” It came out as a breathy shake as Newton seemed to accept that Hermann was forcing him to do this, but there was none of the usual fight in his tone.  Newton was a wound reopening in front of him, pain and fear and determined disbelief, a brilliant red giant poised on the edge of its final collapse. “She…she’s blonde, about your height…I…” Newton glanced quickly to his left before dropping his eyes to the floor away from whatever he was seeing. “Blue eyes…wearing a suit…a jaeger suit…” His voice had gone quiet, but Hermann had no problem hearing his words in the silent hotel. He wouldn’t have struggled to hear him even in the middle of a crowd he was so focused on Newton’s words.

                “Newton,” Hermann used his name again, making sure that he got a nod of response so that he knew the man was there with him, “You realize that you just described Dr. Caitlin Lightcap?” It hurt to see how pale Newton became as he said this, the way the man closed his eyes tightly against the words and shook his head as though he could will it away.

                “Shut up, Hermann.”

                “The woman you are seeing is Cailtin Lightcap…”

                “Stop.”

                “Likely in her last moments. I believe…when we drifted with the hive mind we clung to memories we found there that held something familiar, relevant to ourselves, even as we clung to each other in our attempt not to get lost within it. I have them too, memories from the Kaiju’s perspective…” _Newton below him where he’d just broken through the concrete and into the shelter. Newton fleeing, scrambling away as he gave chase feeling so hungry, angry and running out of air and life but just this one…last…._ _The Kaidonovsky’s, water rushing in as he pushed the jaeger down, watching through the hole burned through the metal giant by the acid as they fought to the very end._ The new vision hit like a punch to the gut making Hermann close his own eyes against it for a moment to push away that otherness that had momentarily taken him away from the here and now. When he reopened them he could tell that Newton hadn’t even noticed the lapse that had likely only lasted a few seconds.

                “It’s not her. That’s not fair it can’t be her.”

                “It is, Newton.”

                “No!” There was the anger that Hermann was so use to, but even with its sudden flare Newton couldn’t draw his focus away from the empty patch of air. “I described half the population of the world, I won’t accept your theory.”

                “It’s hardly half of the population…” Hermann made a frustrated noise, waving a hand to clear the irrelevant fact away as he tried to stay focused on the main issue. “Newton, you must face this. Why did you bring us here seeking ghosts? You have to accept the truth of what is happening.”

                “The truth of what is happening is you aren’t being open to the potential possibility that I’ve stumbled across the first clear and obvious sign of an afterlife that can interact with the present timeline,” Newton bit the words out, rejection and fear laced with his own special brand of poison that came in the form of anger and harsh denial. He pulled Hermann around roughly, and the man tried to forgive him for the twinge of pain in his knee as he stumbled so that he could meet Newton’s angry gaze that he hadn’t so fully faced since after that first drift.

_That’s impossible._

**_Is it? Is it impossible?_ **

                They both found themselves shaking the words out of their ears as Hermann steadied himself with his hands on Newton’s shoulders. His colleague, in turn, was struggling with his desire to just shove Hermann and his stupid theories aside, but he still had enough sense to know how horrible that was of him. And all this time she was still staring at him, watching him as though he was the monster to be feared. As though he was the darkness staring back.

                “It is Dr. Lightcap, Newton.”

                “You can’t know that, Dr. Gottlieb, you can’t see her.” The formal use of his name was meant as a slight, as an insult insinuating that Hermann’s position with him had dropped, and Hermann was finding his own anger had risen enough that he was going to lower himself to Newton’s level in this respect.

                “If you are so certain, _Dr. Geiszler,_ then show me.”

                “What?” Newton seemed thrown off by the suggestion, but Hermann just let his hands slide up the man’s shoulders to where they were cupping the back of Newton’s skull so he could pull him close and press their foreheads firmly together while holding eye contact. Newton seemed both distress and confused, eyes still damp with tears that hadn’t dried from the man’s early break down. Though it was also possible they were fresh and Hermann hadn’t realized Newton was crying again in the dim light. “How the hell am I supposed to show you?” Newton tried to pull away, but Hermann held him there.

                “I have seen Mr. Becket and Ms. Mori do this when they are not able to communicate something clearly through words. I believe it allows a certain level of drift without the apparatus. If you could spare me some semblance of humor on this, Dr. Geiszler, and focus on trying to show me what you are seeing then perhaps we can settle this matter.” Newton studied him, his eyes large behind the glasses and a fractured mix of green and gold hues that Hermann had become familiar with throughout the years of the two of them metaphorically and literally getting in each other’s faces as Newton would put it. Whatever questions the man was struggling with in his head he seemed to come to terms with on his own, and he mirrored Hermann’s hold on him by placing his own hands lightly at the base of Hermann’s skull.

                “Fine.” He spoke the word softly though there was bitterness in it still as he closed his eyes. Hermann watched him for a few moments before doing the same, letting the man focus on trying to bridge this gap that somehow still existed between them.

                They both opened their eyes at the same time, turning to look to where Dr. Caitlin Lightcap stood staring at them. The fear was there on her face, but there was a sort of acceptance he hadn’t been able to see before through his own terror at the face of his nightmare. And that was when she finally chose to start screaming.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newton is finally force to face what drove him to seek ghosts in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Arce-Elliot](http://arce-elliot.tumblr.com/) did an amazing piece of fan art for this fic! You can find it [here!](http://arce-elliot.tumblr.com/post/95256043225/thats-not-fair-it-cant-be-her-arce-elliot)

                It had been shocking to see even though Hermann had tried to steady himself against it, but those few seconds of fear on Dr. Lightcap’s face followed by her scream as she was torn away made his gut twist. He could only imagine what it felt like for Newt, though that wasn’t entirely accurate anymore. He knew just how it felt to Newt, that echo of loss and pain and guilt that circled the man even without seeing the apparition of his friend seconds before her death.

                “It’s not fair…it’s can’t be her,” Newton spoke quietly, but that conviction that he’d had in his voice before was gone. There was hollow acceptance now, and Hermann felt the man’s hands drop down to his neck to anxiously toy with his collar though he didn’t pull away. They stood with their foreheads still resting against each other, and Hermann let his fingers gently massage the other man’s scalp in what he hoped was a calming fashion. “It can’t be her, she died in her Jaeger.” There was a glimmer of conviction back in Newton’s words, but he had turned his eyes back to Hermann looking for confirmation.

                “I…” Hermann swallowed roughly, wishing he could tell the man that it was true, that this was all false but he knew better. Hermann had read the full report on Caitlin Lightcap’s and Sergio D’onofrio’s death, though clearly Newton hadn’t been able to bring himself to do the same. All the man knew was what Hermann had told him that day when the news had come in during the kaiju attack; Yukon Brawler had gone down and both her pilots had gone with her. Hermann steadied himself, reminding that part of him that just wanted to comfort that it would be best if they dealt with this right then. Best if Newton understood and could try to find a way to heal. “When Yukon Brawler went down, Lieutenant D’onofrio was killed but Dr. Lightcap survived, Newton. She stayed within the Com-pod until she believed that the kaiju had moved on, her communications were completely down or she would have heard the warnings that the creature was still there. The reports stated that it was believed that she was killed by the kaiju after exiting the remains of the Com-pod. It is her.”

                Newton made a sound of distress, his fingers gripping the fabric of Hermann’s shirt tightly causing his collar to hitch up awkwardly but he wasn’t going to complain. Newton looked like he was almost in physical pain as he clung to him, and Hermann cursed the decision to come here even though he understood that there was every likelihood that an event like this would have happened at some point no matter their locale. Perhaps it was better that they had every certainty of privacy within the abandoned space. Newton finally pulled away, Hermann letting him go even though he felt a pitch of hesitancy.

                “It’s not fair. Why this? My last memory of her was fucked up already, but now I have this,” Newton said, a hysterical edge to his voice that caused it to go up in pitch.

                _“You can be mad at me all you want, Geiszler, doesn’t change that I’m going in with him_.”

“ _Well, don’t come crying to me when you die in that tin can.”_

The words were shared in each of their minds as they both heard the echo of the moment, their drifts now aligning with proximity and the shared moment of Caitlin’s death. They’d both been there, had both heard those words and now they were both reliving the moment. “It’s not…fuck…this isn’t alright.” Newton wrapped his arms around himself tightly, looking at Hermann as though he was lost and in a way he was. Newton had always been driven by his emotions more so than Hermann, and right then everything had become derailed for him. He was crashing down with a tightness within his chest that ached and cut his breath short, there was a slight pounding at his temples that came with his attempt to just stop…stop everything…stop this and stop his memories. Shore them back up behind that wall he’d created. _The wall was never going to work._ “I can’t have that be the last thing I remember of her. It’s too much, it’s all been too much.”

                “Do you want to know what the last thing I remember of Dr. Lightcap, Newton?” His lab partner’s thoughts were circling around those last words on repeat while images of Caitlin’s death played along with the tune. Newton was forgetting though, so focused on the bitterness he’d spat at her out of anger that he wasn’t remembering the entire conversation, or perhaps he did remember. Newton was staring at him as though he wasn’t certain if Hermann was being serious or not, but then nodded numbly. Newton gravitated back to him, using his colleague’s collar to pull their foreheads together again and being slightly too rough with it causing them to their crack heads lightly.

                “Sorry, sorry…god I’m sorry,” Newton mumbled, and Hermann just laced his fingers back into the mess of the man’s hair to still him as he thought on his own recollection of the last time they’d both seen Dr. Lightcap.

_“You can be mad at me all you want, Geiszler, doesn’t change that I’m going in with him.”_

_“Well, don’t come crying to me when you die in that tin can.” Newton said the words angrily and Caitlin had narrowed her eyes at him. The conversation, if you could call it that, had clearly ended as Newton went back to studying some piece of viscera beneath his microscope. Caitlin took a deep breath and turned to stalk across to the other side of the lab where Hermann was trying to act like he wasn’t listening._ Hermann or was it Newton, no…no it was both _. Where they both did and didn’t stand. She stopped besides him, both of them looking at the equations scribbled across his chalkboards._

_“Dr. Lightcap.” The Hermann/Newton thing said it without taking his eyes off the chalkboard that laid over the vision of a dark hallway in some distant time and place._

_“Hermann…” She said it teasingly, her eyes dipping over to him in a reprimand and he, they, smiled softly._

_“Caitlin.” He corrected himself, and somewhere in the back of their minds Newton scoffed slightly at the fact that Hermann would use first names with her. It had been his thought at the time, rife with a jealousy neither of them had yet to acknowledge since the drift had shared it between them._

_“You’ll watch over him, won’t you?” She spoke quietly, her head tilting back towards where Newton was pretending not to be straining to hear their words while stewing in his guilt over what he’d just said._

_“I…I will watch over him to the extent in which he will allow it,” Hermann looked at her then with a soft frown. “You speak as though you aren’t going to return.”_

_“I’m not dumb, Hermann. Jaeger pilots die and they die frequently, he’s right about that. I…I have to go with him though, he’s who I’m supposed to be with and I couldn’t imagine not being at his side now.” This was far from their first mission, she’d gotten many with her drift partner and current life partner, D’onofrio, but they’d always stayed stationed with the main body of the K-science division so she could continue her work there as well. This time was different though, they had to allocate her where she was most valuable and that was on the ever expanding front line. Newton was scared and hurt, and he was lashing out like a child as he often did when trying to hide his true feelings. “I need to know someone is around to take care of him.”_

_“Of course, if you promise to do your best to avoid the circumstance where I must tell him that you truly are gone for good.”_

_“We’ll kick ass,” she said with a grin, giving Hermann a wink and he found it hard not to share her smile though they both knew…they both understood that in the end the Jaegers almost always fell. Someone cleared their throat from the door, and there was a handsome man leaning against the doorway. He gave them all a wave, but his stance was clear. It was time for them to leave if they were going to make their flight. Their jaeger was already on its way to their new station along the Russian coastline. “Goodbye Hermann.”_

_“Goodbye Caitlin, please do write.” She leaned and gave him a quick peck on the cheek before turning to head towards the door. She hesitated for a few moments behind Newton as the man stared determinedly through the microscope while his leg jittered up and down causing the glassware on the table to rattle and ring lightly. She sighed, moving to pass him when Newton’s hand shot out to take a hold of her wrist._

_“Hey.”_

_“Yes, Newton?”_

_“I was lying. You can come cry to me all you want if you end up dying in your tin can.” He said it teasingly though his voice cracked slightly at the end betraying the tears that he kept hidden from her by staring down at the floor. She’d been his best friend and pretend older sister for so long and now she was leaving him behind._

_“You better believe that I’ll come and haunt your ass if that happens. You’ll be wishing the Ghostbusters were real,” she said lightly, and he looked up at her to give her a grin. She leaned down to steal a quick and chaste kiss before he let her go. She joined Sergio in the doorway, glancing back once more to give a wave before she left._

                The memory faded to leave the hall in its place and he heard Newton sniffle quietly as he pulled away, hands wiping at his eyes beneath his glasses. Hermann reached for him to keep him from walking away entirely, but found that his colleague chose to stay close on his own. Newton pushed his glasses up into his hair so he could trying and wipe away the flow of tears before they fell completely.

                “God I was such an ass.”

                “You were upset and scared, Newton, it was understandable. She understood.” Newton reached an arm out to loop around Hermann’s waist to support the man again though Hermann hadn’t complained. He felt sturdy enough on his own now as long as he didn’t try to move much, locking his bad knee in place to keep it from buckling instead, but he accepted the help readily. “I can share more. You don’t have to let that be the last memory of her, of any of them if you’d like now that we…”

                “Ha, yeah,” Newton gave a short little bark of laughter that didn’t sound quite so pained and lost, “Though maybe just not quite right now. I don’t know if I could handle a whole lot more of the emotional shit at the moment, though I’d love to really get a look at what Chuck looked like to you.”

                “Perhaps he is not the best example of one who we should share memories of.” Hermann said with a frown, though he knew he would if Newton asked. He wasn’t sure he’d handle his lab partner’s memories of the younger Hansen all that well knowing what their relationship had been like. Perhaps Hermann had his jealousies as well. Newton just laughed a little again, though it was cut off with a slight sob. “Have you figured out the answer to my question, Newton? Why ghosts?”

                “Yeah, yeah I know.” They spoke quietly as they went over that last memory of Cailtin alive and well. “She said she’s come back, that she’d haunt me if she died in that Jaeger and…and she didn’t. I just…I needed to know, I need to know if it’s because she couldn’t or because she wouldn’t.” The laughter slipped away to tears that hadn’t ever fully retreated, and Hermann nudged Newton towards the room where perhaps they could both sit and rest. It was getting to be morning now and neither of them had slept much, though it was highly unlikely they’d manage any true sleep at this point as it was.

                “I am quite certain that if Dr. Lightcap could find her way back to you that she would, Newton. However, the lack of clear evidence does not necessarily indicate that she is not here watching over you.”

                “Look at you speaking so certainly when there’s a clear lack of evidence,” Newton said, turning his phrase slightly.

                “Perhaps she did find her way back to you Newton, but it took our experience drifting for her to get through,” Hermann said gently and Newton stilled a little beside him as they reached the bed. He shook himself out of it in silence and helped Hermann sit down. A long moment passed as Newton sat next to him roughly, staring down at the floor and wiping at his cheeks to try and quell the tide of tears.

                “Yeah, maybe she did.”

 

                The rest of the night had passed quietly for the most part. With Newton’s focus towards finding ghosts dissipated they found that the drift had eased as well since it had lost the driving force behind it. Hermann didn’t voice his notice of the correlation, not wanting to give Newton any reason to dwell on the matter beyond trying to finally let himself heal from the losses they had both suffered. They had talked a little, though they had found there was little need to actual speak the words. That was the last remnant of the overwhelming ghost drifting ordeal they’d gone through, there was a silent understanding that clung around them tightly only being broken when they stepped outside to find their cab waiting.

                They were both exhausted as they put what little luggage they had into the back of the car with them, telling the car where they wished to go and then leaning back into the seats for the long drive. Newton had hoped the quiet stillness had stayed between them as he now found himself wondering what Hermann was thinking for the first time within the last several hours. He frowned down at his lap, trying to think at his lab partner with everything he had left in him. He’d liked that little lasting connection even though the overpowering blow of the memories that had led up to it was less than appealing. He didn’t think the two coincided, however, feeing it was more the active sharing of the memories that had opened it, their choice to literally and metaphorically put their heads together.

                Hermann sat leaning back into the bench style seat with his eyes closed, head titled against the headrest as his cane sat between his knees. Newton had made sure to carry everything out to the cab himself, wincing himself at how Hermann had limped but not complained. The echo of a pain in his hip caught his attention now as he shifted uncomfortably; zeroing in on it for a moment as his thoughts sidetracked away from trying to get Hermann to just _think_ about the speed of light. Hermann sighed beside him, cracking his eyes open to look sideways at the other man.

                “Please be quiet, Newton. Try to sleep.”

                “What? I hadn’t said anything.” Newton looked up, frowning at Hermann before the realization had struck him. Hermann confirmed his suspicions for him as he rolled his eyes before closing them once more.

                “Then stop thinking about things that have no relevant meaning at this time other than to contemplate the horrendous nature of the sunlight coming in through the window.” Newton smiled, hoping to radiate that feeling towards his grumpy and tired colleague and he thought for a moment he saw the corners of Hermann’s lips twitch upward. He’d find with time that he would always know when Hermann was intently listening in or focused on him because he’d get a ghost of an ache that settled into the joints of his leg. He had never experienced a more welcome pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right guys! Last chapter of this one. A few asides, this may roll into a part of a series. It will likely not be posted in any sort of chronological order, but I'll try to explain where along the timeline things are if they're not obvious.  
> The mention of Chuck and Newton's relationship with be dealt with in another multipart fic. It will probably be what I focus on next and, like this one, will have no set number of chapters but I have an idea of roughly how long it will turn out.  
> I've had fun with this and writing it has helped respark my writing bug, so you can probably expect more to pop of fairly soon.  
> Love all you wonderful people, and thank you for reading. PacRim is slowly turning into my life.


End file.
